Up to you on drilling, Governor

From today’s editorials: Gov. Paterson should sign a moratorium on new drilling for natural gas. Nothing is lost by further study of the risks and benefits.

This week’s session of the Legislature, for all its inaction on the state budget deficit, wasn’t all for naught. If ever there’s a case to be made for government to delay a decision on an important matter, it’s the Legislature’s approval of a six-month moratorium on new drilling for natural gas.

That’s a bill Governor Paterson should sign without hesitation. It’s still much too early for the state to approve a controversial method of drilling known as horizontal hydraulic fracturing in the Marcellus Shale and elsewhere in New York. The process uses a single rig to send out multiple well lines to fracture rock formations. The moratorium also applies to vertical hydrofracking, which is used for single wells.

Let the debate continue between advocates of hydraulic drilling (who cite its potentially great economic benefits to a state so badly in need of both jobs and tax revenue) and opponents (who fear the potential environmental damage, particularly to water quality). But let that debate take shape as state officials await the completion of studies of hydrofracking by both the state Department of Environmental Conservation and the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

There’s still more that needs to be known about a method of drilling that sends a mix of water, sand and chemicals deep into the shale to fracture rock formations to release pockets of natural gas. It’s not as though the energy that can be harvested across New York will be lost between now and May 15, when the moratorium would be lifted. This isn’t a race that New York can lose.

Among the pressing questions that can be answered, perhaps, by a delay in allowing such drilling is just what specific chemicals are injected into the ground under this process.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said Tuesday that federal officials are contemplating requiring such disclosure of the chemicals used in drilling on public lands. The statement came just hours after the Assembly approved the hydrofracking ban, which the Senate previously had passed.

It would be easier for state officials to regulate drilling, and more reassuring to the public, if they waited until any new federal rules took effect. An oil and gas industry that boasts of the safety of existing drilling procedures ought to be able to readily adapt to further regulations. Drilling companies’ concerns about the proprietary nature of what they say are water-based chemicals in their fracking fluids need to be balanced against a broader desire to guarantee the safety of such drilling.

Delaying drilling in the Marcellus Shale, albeit to the indignation of an energy industry eager to profit from it, gives New York a chance to be a leader once more in environmental policy. No state has ever imposed such a ban, even temporarily.

As for Mr. Paterson, he was saying just last week that opponents of hydrofracking had made a compelling case for a moratorium. So he should sign this legislation to do just that.

He’s right that the DEC’s draft regulation on hydraulic drilling might not be ready until after May 15. Yet that’s no reason not to act. His legacy will be a better one as the governor who paused to protect the environment.